Chapter Text
“Takina, are you awake yet?”
Truthfully, she’s probably been awake for longer than Chisato.
But there isn’t much to do. Chisato had told her the amount of time it would take to walk to the board, which Takina is pretty sure had made her eyes glaze over. She doesn’t remember the exact number, but suffice it to say, she would prefer to avoid it if at all possible.
“Yes. Do you have the mission for today?”
“A few different ones, actually. I thought’chu could pick one?”
Takina wants to protest, say she’ll do more, but the words die on her lips alongside her feeble attempt to climb out of bed.
“…Okay. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”
“Roger! I’ll be in the kitchen~”
“What for?”
Chisato raises an eyebrow.
“…To whip up some breakfast?” She walks back up to the bed, roughly ruffling Takina’s hair, before an obnoxious grin splits across her face. “Geez, Takina, whaddya think I’m doing there? Journeying off on a quest to slay dragons and rescue fair maidens?”
Not that Takina has a very clear view of said grin, what with her hands annoyingly moving her hair so that it obscures her vision. Perhaps it’s a blessing, then.
“I’ll be out in twenty minutes. Enjoy your breakfast.”
“Our breakfast!” Chisato says, with a huff and a pout. “You’ve gotta eat up so your wings grow big and strong!”
“Does caloric intake possess any correlation with wing strength or other cupid-related activities?”
“Well, not physically, but like—”
“I will be out in twenty minutes. Enjoy your breakfast.”
“Eh?! The time got shorter—hey, you seriously thought I was gonna cook and eat a whole-ass breakfast in ten minutes?!!”
Ah, Takina supposed that she had miscalculated. Breakfast was, by standard, a fifteen-minute endeavour. She had simply gotten used to finishing hers in ten during the last bit of her life.
“Regardless, we do not require food for sustenance, correct? But we require sleep. I will see you in fifteen minutes, Chisato.”
“Oh, no, no, no. You stay wide awake, buster.”
…Should she be concerned or irreverent of the change in her tone? Takina figures that she is incapable of death anyhow, and as such, decides to turn back to bed. She has faith in her abilities to wake up within the bounds of her self-imposed time limit—
“Here! One flavoured boiled egg just for you, Your Highness.”
…It has not been fifteen minutes.
In fact, it has scarcely been fifteen seconds since Takina last bid this girl farewell. Honestly, what could be so important that she would be back so soon?
Well, Takina supposes that she’s staring right at said reason.
Namely, Chisato is climbing onto her, wafting an egg in front of her nose.
“Say, Takin—aaahhhh~”
Takina simply bears it, shoving down the urge to protest at that last awful attempt at cheeriness. Any such resistance would only be a waste of time in the face of Chisato Nishikigi. She chews, wilting slightly under Chisato’s gaze; she is not unused to being monitored, but having the person scrutinizing your every expression practically lying on top of her was not anywhere in her memory banks, at least, that she knew of.
“So? How is it?”
It’s…
Despite wanting to state its unappetizingness as to avoid any such trifles in the future, Takina finds herself unable to deny the rich, savoury taste of the egg as the slightly tangy yolk slides down her throat, nothing like the jelled gruel that she’s subsisted off of for more time than she can remember. She’d almost forgotten about how the regular meals tasted, but this is somehow even better than those. Which is an absurd notion; Lycoris’ meals were prepared by some of the finest chefs in the world, let alone Japan. How could one lowly home-cooked egg even hope to compare? But even so…
“Yummy, right?”
“Yes. ‘Yummy’.”
“Super yummy!” Is it even possible for someone to smile that widely? Takina had done nothing more than eat an egg and share her feelings regarding it. Was that such a cause for celebration?
“C’mon, let’s head to the kitchen already! There’s a whole bunch more where that came from—”
“Inform me on today’s mission first.”
Even so, they’ve spent enough time dawdling. Thankfully, Chisato receives Takina’s unwillingness to waver and as such, stomps off with a little sigh, though she keeps smiling as always. Truly, an odd person.
“Well, like I said, we’ve got a few different ones,” she says, returning with a small stack of folders and a plate of… eggs, tomato slices and bacon arranged to look like a smile. Huh.
“First on the menu’s some woman named ‘Saori’—oh, damn, guess her boyfriend got abducted by aliens or something~”
What on Earth is she talking about?
“Looks like she just broke up with him, so she’s just looking for a rebound. Shouldn’t be too hard, but not worth much karma.”
“Let’s see the other ones.”
Chisato obliges, stabbing an egg and stuffing the entire thing into her mouth.
“Wrll, yrr srr, thr nrrsxt—”
“Swallow your food before you talk.”
“—The next mission might be pretty exciting! It’s an ex Lycoris who—”
“Lycoris?”
Their gazes meet, Chisato’s easygoing grin faltering slightly, for some reason. Is it bad that she is displaying enthusiasm for such a job?
“Well, yeah!”
Oh.
Takina would… take not of that—
“Not anymore, of course. She survived the fall of the organization and she’s been putting the pieces back together ever since! A college application and a couple years of therapy later, and bam! Ready for loving!”
Ah, she’d been saying ‘yes’ in response to Takina inquiring as to whether she’d heard ‘Lycoris’ correctly—not in response to her internal inquiry as to her potentially misplaced enthusiasm. And really, who was Chisato to judge Takina for misplaced enthusiasm, anyways?
“Although she is tryna be a cop, so I guess old habits die hard~”
“Let’s move.”
“Oh, uh… Sure! Glad to see you’re taking this seriously, Takina!”
Takina says nothing as she marches out of the house, Chisato’s slightly quieter steps following her as she does.
“What are their names? May I peruse their files?”
“‘Course! All yours~”
Of course, she would have asked to see the files of whomever they picked as their targets, but Takina had not forgotten the vast trove of information that Abe’s folder had netted. Much of it was useless for the given mission, such as his birthday or precise career history, but there were certainly rather large pieces of his backstory—pieces that said nothing of the collapse of Lycoris. But if she were to have the files of two Lycoris…
The wind whips by in the air, kicking Takina’s hair back up into her face, but she shakes it free. She opens the file, ready to burn every bit of information gleaned from it into her retinas, and—
“…Hm.”
“What’s up, Takina? You know ‘em?”
So this was that mystery girl, huh?
Sakura Otome.
Takina couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt excitement. The closest she could imagine was when she’d opened fire on those terrorists, or perhaps the moment that she’d learned she could return to life, before the hope of a true return was well and truly dashed.
But now?
Takina Inoue now knew exactly how it felt to be excited.
Though, it was somewhat difficult to remain intimidating while being princess-carried.
“Chisato, are you certain that there exists no other orientation in which to transport me?”
“No-can-do! A piggyback would restrict my wings, y’know? Plus, doesn’t this make me look cool? Sweeping the damsel off her feet and into my arms~”
“I’m jumping off.”
“Good thing we’ve made it, then!”
Chisato laughs (annoyingly), returning Takina to the ground. Not that she dwells on it for too long. She has a mission.
Or rather, two missions.
Sakura Otome. Several small crushes that never developed into anything more. There’s been a several year-long period in which none had formed—a period that coincided with the period of time directly following Takina’s…
Anyways. Sakura is still alive; that proves that there are still living Lycoris. Takina recalls Chisato taking on a form visible by non-cupids, meaning that Takina can likely do the same. Of course, Chisato has her own information to give, but that does not mean that any information that she gathers here is meaningless; Chisato was dead prior to Takina, meaning that she likely did not experience anything first-hand. So Takina does not hesitate to advance towards the familiar short, orange hair on the person sitting on the bench.
“Hey, uh, Takina? Is that—”
And then, she stops.
Takina tries to step forwards.
Her legs do not respond.
Her diaphragm reflexively seizes up so as to not allow any sound to escape her throat—not that it mattered; Takina had nothing to say in the first place.
A gunshot rings out before the countdown ends and Takina’s eyes shoot open on instinct, expecting to be forced shut by a bullet through the heart, but the blood in her field of view isn’t hers.
It’s Fuki.
She’s missing an arm and is slightly taller than Takina remembers,but her facial features and haircut are unmistakably hers. No, what had shaken Takina into her current state had not been the simple sight of her seemingly deceased field commander.
It was the fact that Fuki was wearing civilian clothes and carrying no weapons
It looked… Foreign. Unnerving. When Takina pictured Fuki, it had always been with a stubborn fire in her eyes, a refusal to make or disobey any command as she coloured adversaries to match her uniform. But how?
She was slumped, leaning against the bench, clad in navy sweats as her eyes hung half closed, entirely devoid of any awareness of her surroundings.
Why…
Why does this feel so… wrong? Takina had known that Lycoris had been disbanded. She had believed every word that Chisato had uttered.
So, why does it feel as though she’s only just learned of it?
“Yo, Fuki! Finished up with my exam!”
“Ngh, what? Oh. Congratulations.”
And there’s the target.
Sakura Otome sits down beside Fuki, who… leans into her, eyes fully closing as she exposes her unprotected back to the world.
“What took you so long?”
“Prof held me back a little! Just a little lecturin’ ‘bout bubbling in all the answers properly. Seriously, like, why do we even need to do these exams anyhow? I feel like we’re pretty qualified already.”
“‘Hitman’ and ‘Police Officer’ are different jobs, Sakura. Just be glad that we weren’t murdered by a lynch mob after everything settled.”
“Fair, fair~ Seriously though, I’m pooped! I think I’m just gonna cuddle here with you for the rest o’ the day…”
“Cut it out.”
“So? Takina? Whaddya think? Honestly, looks like Sakura’s so gung ho you’d think she’s already been shot! But, nah, the job board never lies!”
They…
They just moved on?
Ceased investigations? To bring justice to the man who had blown a hole into the only home they’d known?
Who slaughtered the closest thing that they had to a family in cold blood?
Unacceptable.
Abhorrent.
They have the gall to go about their days as if nothing has occurred?
“Takina? You, uh… still there with me?”
“They are forsaking their duty.”
“…Well, you’re not wrong.”
“Yet you are okay with that?”
Chisato walks around Takina, into her field of view and Takina stubbornly stares down Fuki, unflinching even as Chisato leans in so that their faces are only inches apart.
“I mean, it’s been twenty or so years of service since they were born, right? I’d say they’ve earned the right to finally get to live a little.”
Takina’s eye twitches as Chisato smiles that steady, unyielding, infuriating smile of hers, spouting off nonsense.
“Were they not kept alive by the goodwill of DA?”
The Summer wind blows through the air, lightly rustling the lone tree over the bench as Takina digs her fingernails into her thigh hard enough to make a lasting indent.
She can’t feel the pain.
“Serving DA is all that we aspired towards. And when I first donned that uniform…”
Takina had been proud. She was fulfilling my duty. She had finally been deemed worthy of giving back to the organization that had housed her, fed her, and saved her from destitution. Do they—did they not feel the same?
Was I the only one who wanted to give back?
“It must’ve been the happiest you’d been.”
She…
No. Happiness is unnecessary. Gratitude? Determination? Those are useful. Happiness is fickle and serves no purpose to its possessor.
“You don’t need to look so surprised, y’know. I was the same way.”
“If that’s true, you must understand,” Takina says, her brow furrowing and her teeth gritting as she watches Fuki stir in Sakura’s lap, stuck in blissful laziness.
They just… sleep on benches. Take written exams and complain about having to bubble in answers properly. Who does that benefit? Why couldn’t they have put in the effort when DA needed it? There’s a lump in Takina’s throat and then Chisato’s existence next to her is an affront to the universe itself. How dare she simply flounce around, wasting time playing soccer with children when she could make a true difference? When she could have made a true difference? And she says that she was the same way?
She and Takina have nothing in common.
“It was our one goal. To protect and serve the organization that made us who we are,” Takina mutters, her voice wavering before all at once, the lump ruptures and she whips around to face Chisato, eyes wild as sound erupts from her stomach.
“And it was all taken away from me! How…” And then, as quickly as it came, the fight drains from her and Takina is left on her knees, her wings lacking the strength to lift themselves off of the grass as dew seeps into her.
Because really, it’s her fault, isn’t it? She disobeyed orders. She fired without being given a command. She is the one responsible for the failed arm’s deal operation. If she had simply held her fire, then perhaps—
“Takina, there’s still a bunch of people here who need your help here. DA and Lycoris are gone, but there are still other ways. Better ways! I mean, just look at those two,” Chisato says, gesturing at the bench. “There’s been a bunch of reform while you were gone. Killing isn’t the only way we keep the country safe anymore.”
Takina feels her eye twitch, wings flaring back defensively as she stands, gripping each of her upper arms as her voice contorts into a snarl, words tumbling out of her before she can even begin to process their contents.
“That’s easy for you to say! You weren’t there! You couldn’t have done anything to stop it! And you weren’t even at the main branch to begin with! But me?”
Her throat freezes up again, obscuring her last words in the anguish spilling out from her.
“This place that I called home… It doesn’t exist anymore.”
And again, it’s as if a vacuum sucks out every ounce of energy from her body as she chokes up again and she has to fight to keep the tears out of her eyes and voice, eventually turning away when unable to.
And then she realizes—she did it again. She lost control, and snapped at her mentor, and now, Chisato is going to toss her aside, and she’ll really be all alone.
She supposes it’s fitting. That by attempting to save an ally, she would find herself without any. That by yearning for love, she would push away the only individual who had ever shown her kindness in a single day.
“I’m sorry,” she eventually manages to get out, her expressions mostly under her control at this point.
“Takina…”
“It’s my fault, after all.”
There are footsteps behind her. But instead of trailing off, preparing to take to the skies, they… They approach Takina. And then, there’s that same comforting hand resting on her shoulder, a wing curling around her, close enough to feel it displace the wind but not quite touching.
“You did what you did to save an ally—that wasn’t an order. You decided that for yourself. That’s what’s important.”
A fat load of good ‘deciding for herself’ did.
Erika is dead.
Takina saved no one.
“Besides, I’m… I guess I didn’t give you the full story ‘bout everything, did I?”
…That gets Takina’s attention. She stiffens in preparation to receive Chisato’s explanation.
“There was radio interference that day, wasn’t there?”
“Correct. Just for a few minutes. It was technical trouble.”
“It was a hack.”
…What?
Impossible.
Takina doesn’t notice that she’s turned to meet Chisato until Chisato looks up to meet her gaze.
“…A hack on Radiata?”
“It was the most powerful AI with all of DA’s secrets, yeah? It took priority over everything else. Interference should’ve been impossible, but wouldn’tcha know it: it happened. That ended setting off the whole chain of dominoes that led to DA’s fall.”
“But instead of shoring up Radiata—”
“—They decided to say a Lycoris acted recklessly, throwing you under the bus.”
This is absurd.
Impossible.
Is Chisato lying?
In any other world, if it were a living Chisato telling Takina this from her jail cell, she would have dismissed it as some sort of cruel joke to elicit false hope from her.
But Lycoris is gone. Chisato has nothing to gain from lying. And Takina doesn’t want to—refuses to believe that DA would do something so completely and utterly incompetent…
It’s already happened.
And the past cannot be changed.
“…Then what could I have done?”
“Nothing, really.”
“That’s…”
Unfair.
Wrong.
It’s—
She doesn’t get to finish the thought; Chisato’s arms wrap around her back, wings blocking out the sun and enveloping Takina into a small globe of pure white, crooning into her ears with a warm, almost maternal tone entirely unlike her usual boisterous register.
“But now? We move on. Live a little. Pick up a hobby or two. Make people fall in love. We won’t get older like this, y’know? So we can just run around Japan for as long as we want. We could write a book, pick up an instrument, or study whatever, and when we’re ready, you can fill up your karma. Sure, we can’t fall in love as cupids, but besides that? The world’s your oyster!”
She squeezes a little tighter and for a moment, Takina allows her eyes to close, crumpling against the plush softness surrounding her.
“There are things to be gained by losing something.”
Chisato pulls back, red eyes staring right through Takina’s as she grasps her hands, Takina nearly melting from just how utterly sincere her speech is, as if challenging her to call it a bluff.
“If you didn’t act how you did back there, we never would have met, would we? Hm?”
They’ve only known one another for a day. It would be ridiculous for Takina to claim that her death was worth meeting Chisato.
“Hey! The target’s still open!”
“The hell are you waiting for, then? Shoot her!”
Right; they still have a mission to complete. In less time than it takes to blink, Takina draws her pistol, points it at their assailants, and—
“Wha—What are you doing?!”
—finds herself being hoisted into the air, held tight against Chisato as dust kicks up around them, dispersing the higher they ascend, and Takina doesn’t even have time to hold on for dear life before Chisato tosses her into the air and the world turns upside down.
“I’m so freaking glad I was able to meet you!”
Chisato zips up and catches her, descending a few metres before tossing her again, the sensation of freefall overtaking Takina as she eventually stops trying to reposition herself in the air, instead simply allowing Chisato to let her feelings out.
“I’m glad! Super duper glad!”
Gunshots ring out and Takina can only marvel in awe as Chisato’s wings flare out, her arms swinging wildly as she intercepts magazine after magazine from the two over cupids in the area, not a single stray bullet managing to touch either herself, Takina, or Erika as she effortlessly dips, dives, and climbs through the air, controlling Takina’s flight with scarcely a thought as she laughs, her laugh as free as one can be as Takina soars, gazing down upon the greys and greens of the city park, mind barely keeping up with all of the stimuli at once.
She can’t fly; she is putting all of her trust in Chisato to somehow manage to hold off two other Cupids with nothing but pistols while maintaining perfect control of Takina’s motion. It’s utterly foolish.
And Takina has never been freer.
“You’re gonna make yourself sad just to dig up an old grave?” Chisato stops, slowly descending to the ground, gently setting Takina upon it feet-first before spreading out her arms and wings off to her sides while the other Cupids reload.
“You have a purpose. If you aren’t ready to go back, we can just keep buying more guns, ammo, and other stuff until you are. If you like being a cupid better, then you can stay with me! And if you find something else, then that works too! We’ve got all the time in the world to feel things out.”
The other cupids appear to realize the futility of their ranged assaults, beginning to close the distance as Chisato places a supportive hand on Takina’s upper arm.
“And when we’ve got the karma? That’s when you can decide what you wanna do!”
“What I want to do…”
Until now, her goal had been to find out more about DA. And she could still do that; she still wanted to discover more about her past and what had led the world to abandoning her, but…
“For me, what I want always comes out on top,” Chisato says, placing a cheeky finger on her chin before her expression cracks into uncertainty. “But that doesn’t always work out. For now, I think I want to get these two goobers mackin’ on each other harder than a diamond.”
“Hm? What do you—”
“Shoot her when you get the chance!”
And just like that, Chisato’s off, fending off the two cupids as if it’s nothing, all but pinning them in place with her gunfire.
And then, it’s just Takina.
And Sakura. And Fuki.
And her pistol.
…And her thoughts.
DA is gone. It doesn’t matter anymore. Was it wrong for these two to move on with their lives? Should they have continued down the path that had been laid out in front of them, not stopping to rest until the organization was saved?
Takina supposes it doesn’t matter anymore. Her choices, their choices—none of it matters.
“We could run away together.”
…Perhaps she ought to do something that does.
She recalls the painful longing in her chest, her whole body being overtaken by the despair of wanting, more than anything to fall in love yet remaining unable to as the blood drains from her. Does Sakura deserve the same? She did shoot Takina, after all.
“I’m so freaking glad I was able to meet you!”
Takina holsters her pistol.
She reaches behind her back, drawing her rifle out in front of her, adjusting the grip and removing the scope, lightly tapping the barrel against Sakura’s head.
The safety of others had always rested at the forefront of Takina’s mind. Between that and serving DA, ensuring the continued peace of Japan had effectively been Takina’s sole reason for existing.
Could she truly live for herself? She’d spent so long doing anything but, tossing her body into the line of fire as if it were the natural thing to do. And it was the right thing to do, was it not? Lycoris are disposable; they are the guns and ammunition that they carry; they are the peace that they are able to preserve. Easily replaced cogs ceaselessly churning to defend the endlessly varied masses of civilians who stood behind them.
Takina had always brought others survival. Perhaps living for herself was a tad far off, but…
She would have time. And in the meantime, she supposed that she could try bringing them happiness instead.
A gunshot rings out and Takina watches as Sakura’s pupils dilate, her breath cutting itself halfway through an inhale as her face shines a brighter scarlet than Takina’s seen.
“I love you.”
The kiss comes faster than Takina can react and their lips only touch for a brief moment, but Takina sees the intensity in Erika’s gaze and she knows this isn’t enough for her.
How did she feel? Before the thought even finishes, Takina realizes how futile a question it is. She is a cupid; by definition, she cannot fall in love and thereby learn. So instead, she simply watches Sakura as she begins to cautiously stroke Fuki’s hair, as if worried that someone may rob the opportunity from her if she does not take it quickly enough.
And as with before, Takina cannot comprehend it. The sounds of battle fade as the other cupids appear to realize that the target has beeshot, leaving Chisato to drift down to Takina’s side.
“Good work, Takina! Didja get the karma?”
“Indeed. The rifle handles well, Chisato.”
“Ehh? Well, that’s great to hear! D’you wanna pick up another job, or…?”
That would be the natural thing to do. They are cupids; their purpose is to make people fall in love. So taking a job would be what makes the most sense. But…
“Let’s go home. I would like to have some cake.”
And when Chisato tackles Takina into yet another bone-crushing hug, Takina can’t help but smile despite it all. It would be impossible for her to discover what she wants to do in a week, a month, years, or even decades..
But she has time. And Chisato. And as foolish a thought as it is to have, just for the briefest of moments, Takina thinks that so long as she has those two by her side, she’ll be alright in the end.
“Hey, Takina?”
“What is it?”
They’re flying now, and Chisato’s been oddly subdued, avoiding most of the flashy acrobatics that Takina’s grown accustomed to over the course of the last two days, instead simply maintaining a straight, steady pace. She appears to battle with herself, though only for a moment, before cradling Takina so that her ear is up against CHisato’s mouth as she whispers,
“Happy birthday.”
Her birthday was yesterday. That statement makes no sense.
Yet Takina only smiles as they fly into the afternoon sun.